Student Research Grants are due each year on November 30th. Each grant provides a cash award of $1,250 to support the student’s research. This year seven students submitted 9 applications (two applied for both awards). Submissions were reviewed by Steve Allen, Dave Bushek, Neil Borne, Dan Cheney, Leroy Creswell, Kim Reece, Bill Shaw, Sandra Shumway, and Steve Tettlebach.

The 2010 winner of the Melbourne R Carriker Student Grant for Research is Ashlee Lillis for her proposal “Underwater noise as an orientation and settlement cue for estuarine larval invertebrates”. Ashlee is a doctoral student under the advisement of David Eggleston at North Carolina State University. Her project hypothesizes that “acoustic signals may be important for marine invertebrate larvae to locate productive recruitment grounds such as reefs and coastal subtidal areas, which have distinctive biophysical sound signatures. Biological sounds produced by conspecifics, prey-species and/or habitat-forming species, may facilitate the recruitment of sound-receptive species to habitats with attractive acoustic signals; moreover, currents and waves breaking over complex structures, such as shallow reefs and seamounts create low vibrations that can propagate long distances and possibly serve as an orientation mechanism.” Preliminary data supported this contention so she will investigate this hypothesis further in an elegant set of laboratory and field studies. Results should contribute to our fundamental understanding of larval biology and ecology.

The 2010 winner of the Michael Castagna Student Grant for Applied Research is Hilde Zenil Becerra for her proposal “Passive acoustics as a monitoring tool for evaluating oyster reef restoration”. Hilde is a masters candidate at Florida Atlantic University under the advisement of Vincent Encomio. Hilde’s research postulates that just as different habitats produce different sonic signatures as a result of species composition, so might restored habitats produce varying sound profiles as community succession proceeds until the habitat can be considered restored. She will test this by recording and analyzing the sound profiles of oyster reefs at various stages of restoration and comparing that with natural reefs. If successful, this could provide a powerful, non-destructive method for monitoring the restoration of shellfish habitats.

Hilde and Ashlee were presented with checks at the Annual Meeting in Baltimore. NSA and the entire shellfish research community look forward to learning about your findings at a future meeting with an update in a future NSA Quarterly Newsletter. Congratulations to both of you!